People certainly love to compare objects, events, traits, and people with each other. It can be a very insightful activity that helps us understand and categorize the things we see. Much of our learning process depends on comparing and contrasting stuff. Comparisons are also a nifty way to get a point across without indulging in long-winded explanations. As a result, there are more than a few tropes that deal with situations or characters being compared.
See also Juxtaposition Tropes.
Note: Please keep Foil tropes in that sub-index rather than list them here as well. Lots of redundancy, y'know?
Tropes:
Sub-indexes:
- Absolute Comparative: Describing a product as "better" without mentioning what it's being compared to.
- Always Someone Better: Anything you can do, another character can do better.
- Analogy Backfire: A character makes an analogy that says the opposite of what they had in mind.
- Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: If you do something, this character will try to outshine you, or has already.
- Bait-and-Switch Comparison: A comparison of two things: one's like the other, and the other is the other.
- "Before" and "After" Pictures: Two pictures comparing before and after using a miracle product.
- Better than Sex: When something is so good, sexual pleasure pales in comparison.
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: Dystopian only to the characters, but not really that bad.
- Crazy Cultural Comparison: A visitor from a faraway place demonstrates bizarre "normal" behavior.
- Deceptively Simple Demonstration: Proving a product's efficiency with a laughably easy task.
- Dissimile: Comparing two things that are nothing alike.
- Food and Body Comparison: Food is used to describe/represent a body part.
- Godwin's Law: Frivolously and unfavorably comparing someone you're arguing against with the Nazis.
- Grass Is Greener: People are always discontent with their own circumstance; they think others have it better.
- Hypothetical Offspring Comparison: Someone or something is called the hypothetical baby of two or more things.
- Inadequate Inheritor: When a successor fails to meet up to the standards set by their predecessor.
- Insult to Rocks: It's so bad that even usually thought of as terrible is superior.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Petty and/or annoying behavior makes audiences hate a character more than actual atrocities.
- Lopsided Dichotomy: Either something absurd, or the reasonable thing I'm actually suggesting.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Two characters or groups at odds realize they are more alike than they want to admit.
- Only Sane by Comparison: In a cast full of crazy, the least overtly flawed character is the only sane man by default.
- Our Better Is Different: Subverting the idea of "higher is better".
- Overshadowed by Awesome: They're not weak, but other characters are so powerful they seem that way.
- Parity Product Paradox: A product being pitched as the best is meaningless because everything is the same quality.
- Reviewer Standard Comparisons: Critics using specific works/artists as codifiers for the genre they’re reviewing.
- Side-by-Side Demonstration: Demonstrating the advertised product's effectiveness when compared to another brand.
- Slower Than a Snail: Something considered slow speeds past something else to show how slow the latter is going.
- A Success, by Comparison: A character failed at a task, but is acknowledged to still have done surprisingly well.
- Superior Successor: A successor who's more competent, intelligent, or much stronger than their ancestor.
- Treated Worse than the Pet: Someone's status in their family is so low that even animals are treated better/valued more.
- What Is One Man's Life In Comparison?: A character is asked to sacrifice his/her own life for the greater good.
